Category Archives: Life

“As a Roman arch survives the luxury of departed empire”

Posted on 26/06/2020 by alasdairflett

The title quote is taken from Arnold Bennett’s Old Wives’ Tale, an epic novel of 1908 whose essence can be distilled as the disastrous attempt of a lower middle class family to hold onto former Victorian glories while the structures … Continue reading →

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On Arendt

Posted on 18/06/2020 by alasdairflett

This June has felt remarkably like the last. A lot of doing not very much and feeling guilty, anxious and restless about that. Over the past few weeks, I’ve had to jump start the car a couple of times and … Continue reading →

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Money is a Memory

Posted on 02/06/2020 by alasdairflett

Last night we were talking about the tin mine at Warbeth. That and the problem geology posed to religion in the 19th century. I thought I ought to have included the mining operation in my Bronze Age spiel for the … Continue reading →

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General Knowledge

Posted on 21/05/2020 by alasdairflett

It’s May. At the end of the month, we could be heading into phase one of lifting lockdown. Had it not been for Coronavirus, the tourist season would be ramping up in Orkney and I’d be fulltime Skara Brae. As … Continue reading →

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Charles

Posted on 09/04/2020 by alasdairflett

Charles was the first to move in at Hermit’s Croft student accommodation that fateful Saturday in September. His buzz cut look and austere apparel was not the combination of flowing locks and trim overcoats I would become used to over … Continue reading →

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Gray’s Gauntlet

Posted on 29/03/2020 by alasdairflett

“At least now there is something we all have in abundance – time” – one of the truisms of the Corona era. But time is what we’re fighting for now; the Quarry’s been brought in to buy it, to put … Continue reading →

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Mid-March Musings

Posted on 15/03/2020 by alasdairflett

I am now a qualified lifeguard. Well, more accurately, I have a lifeguard qualification. I am not currently “practising” as a lifeguard, not yet being paid to guard life as it were. In my last post, I used the term … Continue reading →

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Toot-toot-toot! Lifeguard going in!

Posted on 20/02/2020 by alasdairflett

The year 2020 is in and I am reaching the end of my twenty third on this planet. Will Taylor Swift ever speak to me in the same way? I think at this stage I should firmly be considered an … Continue reading →

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2019 in retrospect

Posted on 01/01/2020 by alasdairflett

In January work began in earnest on my German dissertation. I was comparing the 1950s poetry of two of East Germany’s leading literary figures: Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Müller. The latter had been charged with unoriginality in contemporary criticism of … Continue reading →

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Orfeo

Posted on 27/10/2019 by alasdairflett

Sixty mile an hour gusts subsided; it was time to reopen the village. First, however, I would be consigned to the till, and stock reshuffling – replenishing puffin fledglings from a partially barren wicker basket and depositing fresh ova in … Continue reading →

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